Sporting goods icon Hauff dies

SIOUX CITY, Iowa — Sioux City’s iconic sporting goods salesman, Dwight Hauff, is dead at 104.

Hauff began selling sporting goods for A.G. Spalding in 1930 and founded his own store, Dwight Hauff Sporting Goods in 1933 in Sioux City. It grew to five locations, including stores in Omaha and Sioux Falls, S.D.

Hauff was known for going to work at the Sioux City store every day, even well past his 100th birthday. He last visited the store in early June, according to his daughter, Anne Shaner of Sioux City.

When Hauff was 100, he was honored by the national organization Experience Works as “America’s Oldest Worker,” a recognition that requires putting in at least 20-hour work weeks and drawing a paycheck. The award drew the attention of Jay Leno, and Hauff traveled to California to be a guest on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”

Shaner said her father still owned his stock in Hauff Sporting Goods but had merged the Sioux Falls and Sioux City stores so his son, Steve Hauff, who had long run the Sioux Falls site, could manage both.

“He’s an icon in the sporting goods equipment industry across the country. He’s probably better known nationally than he is in Sioux City,’’ Bernie Saggau, former executive director of the Iowa High School Athletic Association, told the Sioux City Journal in 2003.

Hauff was elected to the Sporting Goods Industry Hall of Fame in 1986, served two terms on the National Sporting Goods Association board of directors, including as president in 1960, and in 1996 was inducted into the Greater Siouxland Athletic Association Hall of Fame.

Hauff was born and raised in Merrill, Iowa, and later taught school and coached there. In 1926 he graduated from Morningside College in Sioux City, where he played baseball and basketball.

Hauff was an active alumnus and maintained a special interest in the college over the decades, especially the annual Sioux City Relays.

Journal sports editor Terry Hersom said Hauff “never lost his sharp mind. He was a walking encyclopedia of sports.”

Shaner said echoed that memory: “If he met someone, he’d ask where they were from and could always name the colors and mascot of their local teams.”

Sports were important in the Hauff family home as well, she said. “If you didn’t know the scores of last night’s games when you came to the breakfast table, you just as well not come,” Shaner said.

She said her father remained sharp until a month ago when chronic pain in his knees and back required heavier medication.

“I will miss him,” Shaner said. “But I will not mourn him, because he lived a full life.”

Services will be 11 a.m. Friday at Grace United Methodist Church in Sioux City.

Hauff’s wife, Ruth, died in 1997.

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